BJP chief ministers wanted MGNREGA to include farm work. Modi government’s bill goes another way

A group of seven chief ministers, four of them from the Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies, had in 2020 recommended expanding the scope of the rural employment guarantee programme to include more agriculture-related work.

But ignoring their recommendation, the Modi government has instead introduced a bill to replace the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.

The Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission Gramin, or VB-G RAM G Bill, 2025, economist Jean Dreze said, “is all set to destroy MGNREGA in the guise of revamping it as a new scheme”.

Passed in 2005, MGNREGA legally binds the government to provide 100 days of work every year to any rural household that demands it. VB-G RAM G Bill, 2025, does away with this guarantee.

It also institutes a 60-day pause on work during the agricultural season. The government has argued that this will “facilitate adequate farm-labour availability during peak agricultural seasons”.

But the provision stands in stark contrast to what the panel of chief ministers had recommended in 2020.

The sub-group was formed in 2018 under the aegis of the Niti Aayog at the initiative of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for “policy coordination between the agriculture sector and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme”.

It was meant to address concerns “about the rising cost of production in agriculture” – reflecting the view that NREGA had given farm workers greater bargaining power to demand higher wages during sowing and harvesting seasons, thus, leading to a higher cost of production for farmers.

The sub-group, however, concluded that NREGA had not caused “any adverse effect on farmers’ income in the medium to long run despite rise in real wages in rural India at national level”. It also pointed out that there had been “near stagnation in real rural wages over the last 3 to 4 years”.

The group’s deliberations

The sub-group met only once in July 2018. In the meeting, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Adityanath suggested “ways to utilise the fund of MGNREGS in all stages from pre-sowing to post harvest”. He proposed that “the additional cost to farmers during the sowing season” be covered under the job guarantee scheme.

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar concurred with Adityanath’s view. “There may be a need to broaden the policy to extend the benefit to small and marginal farmers for the work they do on their farms,” he said. He proposed that “the benefit must cover tenant farmers as well”, adding that any changes be made after consultation with states and “deeper thought”.

The final report of the sub-group, submitted in 2020, however, made a more cautious recommendation.

It said that while paying workers through NREGA funds for labour done on individual farms may be beneficial for rural welfare, it will lead to a huge financial burden on the government.

Instead, it suggested that NREGA funds be used to boost farm productivity by adding more agricultural activities to the works permitted under the Act.

In a U-turn, the Modi government, in its latest bill directs states to halt rural employment work during the sowing and harvest seasons. It states, “All authorities responsible for planning, sanctioning or executing works under this Act shall ensure that all works are undertaken only outside the notified peak agricultural seasons.”

The convenor of the chief ministers’ panel was Shivraj Singh Chouhan, then chief minister of Madhya Pradesh. He had called for a study to analyse the prospects of integrating agriculture and NREGA and for regional workshops to gather views from farmers’ and workers’ representatives.

Now as Union Agriculture Minister, he is in charge of tabling the VB-G RAM G bill in Parliament. It not only contradicts the group’s key recommendations, but the Opposition and civil society groups have also pointed out that it was introduced abruptly without any consultation.

‘False conflict’

The report by the chief ministers’ sub-group was not the first instance of a government-led committee calling for the integration of NREGA and agriculture.

A 2015 task force for eliminating poverty in India, also created by the Prime Minister, and led by then NITI Aayog vice chairman Arvind Panagariya, had called for using NREGA funds to pay farmers during peak seasons.

A paper authored by Panagariya argued that farmers were experiencing acute shortages of labour during the peak agricultural season. “It would be worthwhile to consider a reform to address this shortage such that farmers are allowed to hire MGNREGA workers with them paying the bulk of the wage (for example, 75 per cent) and MGNREGA covering the remainder,” it said.

Parliamentary records show the government did not accept the task force’s recommendations.

The idea of paying farm workers through NREGA funds and the 60-day blackout period under the proposed bill have been criticised by grassroots activists, researchers and economists on similar grounds.

They point out that the rural employment guarantee programme aimed not only to provide a safety net to workers but also dismantle feudalism in rural areas by giving workers greater bargaining power.

“MGNREGA destroyed the dependence of labourers on landlords,” said Chakradhar Buddha, a researcher with LibTech India, a coalition that works to improve public service delivery. “But this bill effectively destroys that privilege for at least two months.”

Rajendran Narayanan, who teaches economics at the Azim Premji University, said that the 60-day blackout period “is trying to pit workers and agricultural labourers against farmers”. He said it was “creating an artificial conflict”.

Buddha made a similar argument in a 2018 piece he had co-authored with Diego Maiorano, a senior assistant professor at the University of Naples. Criticising the proposal to cover farm labour costs using NREGA funds, the piece noted: “Farmers most acutely hit by the decades-long agricultural crisis tend to own small or medium-size plots of land and rely mostly on family labour. Paying for their labour will make little difference for them.”

With the Modi government introducing a more radical change than the 2018 chief ministers’ recommendation, NREGA workers groups have responded sharply. The NREGA Sangharsh Morcha, in a statement, said: “Workers, especially women workers, in need and willing to work, will now be legally deprived of work for at least two months.”

“The Union Government is seeking to dismantle a historic rights-based legislation and reduce the right to work to a discretionary dole,” the Morcha’s statement added.